[dundee] Dundee City Council goes Linux!

[Andrew Clayton]

On Sat, 2003-12-06 at 13:26, Mark Harrigan wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 06, 2003 at 11:34:10AM +0000, Andrew Clayton wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Perhaps... but then again, they could be spending a lot more than that
> > [1] with their current setup....
> > 
> > 
> > [1] Either with the M$ TAX or if they are on some other proprietary
> > system, then the maintenance costs of those *systems* won't come
> > cheap... hmm...e.g, why is everyone switching from Solaris/SPARC to
> > Linux/x86....
> 
> It's definitely not an x86 box.

Read it again... didn't say it was, I was just giving an example...

Linux on the mainframe can also be very cost effective... hundreds of
virtual Linux systems on one centrally managed system... plenty of
people are going for it...


> 
> Yeah and you still will, Linux doesn't run on the bare metal, it needs
> z/VM in there too. And I suspect that the applications running on it
> will still be rather proprietary too. The cost saving probably comes from
> increased reliability and the consolidation of the servers into a
> single system that won't need replaced or maintained as much, plus why
> have a team of well paid computer specialists when it only takes one
> or two with that system?

I don't think your last point really stands up.... just because it's all
on one system doesn't need to mean lots fewer people running it...
depending on what software they are running, they will still need the
people with the application skills that they currently have...

Sure, Unix/Linux does generally require less *administrators* than say
Windows.... but e.g if you running an ISP type shop, you still need mail
admins, dns admins, web admins etc, whether it's on one box or not...


> 
> ... /me ponders
> 
> and we're sure this is a positive move? 
> 

Absolutely.. it can only be good. Others will watch with interest and
hopefully follow. They'll have done the math, I doubt they'd be doing
this if it was going to be a lot more expensive than what they already
have.


> You know nerds not having jobs... 
> 
> Mark



Andrew